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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (107097)	7/23/2003 9:41:56 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Editorial: The death of David Kelly [New Scientist magazine] newscientist.com 19:00 23 July 03 Journalist or scientist, if you wanted to know about Iraq's past chemical and biological weapons programmes or their future potential there was only one man in Britain to ask: David Kelly. He had been a hands-on microbiologist, a senior player at Britain's Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, led a team of weapons inspectors in Iraq, and advised Hans Blix as he set up the latest inspection regime, UNMOVIC. But last week Kelly apparently killed himself after becoming embroiled in a sordid intrigue at the heart of Tony Blair's government. So extraordinary are the events surrounding his death, and so high the stakes, that the episode is now the subject of a judicial inquiry led by Lord Hutton. Kelly was caught in a vicious battle between the BBC and the government over whether the government exaggerated claims about Iraq's weapons capability in an intelligence dossier published before the war. After the war, as the weeks went by and no evidence of WMDs turned up, the reliability of British intelligence was called into question. In May, the BBC began broadcasting stories - now attributed to Kelly - that it was not the intelligence that was wrong, but the "spin" added to it by Blair's office. As temperatures rose, MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee mounted an inquiry. Three questions leap out. First, why does Kelly's testimony to the select committee differ from accounts given by BBC reporters of their discussions with him? By the time Kelly gave evidence, he had reportedly been questioned for five days by his employer (the Ministry of Defence), named in public by the MOD against his wishes, and kept in an MOD safe house. During all this time, had the MOD forced him into some kind of deal? Could it be that BBC reporters manipulated Kelly's views for their own ends? For one journalist to do this is plausible. But it seems Kelly spoke to three and gave a similar account to all of them. Finally, in two of the BBC reports there is a sense that Kelly speaks not only for himself but for "people in intelligence". This raises the question of whether he acted alone or with the approval of others. Answering these questions may go some way to explaining why a man who survived confrontations with the vicious, secretive regime in Baghdad was finally destroyed by a supposedly free and open society